Hi everyone,
A close fried sent me the link as he has found it very helpful and supportive, although we have spent many hours/years discussing these subjects, since meeting on a psychotherapy training course many years ago.I am coming from a more 'spiritual' base having been born into a Spiritualist family and being aware of 'spirits' like many others, I am sure, from an early age. I then went through school ,Uni, trained as a teacher,married and had two children and it was always on the' back burner'. My sister and mother sent away for books on metaphysics /esoteric subjects and I inherited them and read them. After a traumatic psychical awakening, resulting from a love affair that ended my marriage,I joined a 'development circle' and meditation group and trained to become a spiritualist medium for about 10 years with some amazing 'old pioneers' of spiritualism who built their church with their 'bare hands' ..literally.I was privileged to be trained by them.
I later went to The Findhorn Community in Scotland which gave me another view of spirituality. I then ended a very volatile,passionate relationship, as I felt 'torn apart' by our life style which was very materialistic I consequently went to live and work in Glastonbury as a holistic therapist. I later went on to work for the homeless and then for those in recovery from drugs and alcohol.
I later came back to Bristol to work and have rejoined the same church as a 'Spiritual healer' but am not finding the same sense of awe and wonder. I keep going on workshops,reading books, in the hope of finding this sense of fulfilment. I run a group for meditation and spiritual awareness but somehow I feel that I want to do something else. Thank you for reading this. I apologise if it sounds like a potted history but to me all these events mentioned have had a huge bearing on my life and the way I am feeling now. Any suggestions?

Welcome to the forum, Siriessa1985. Well, you've certainly run the gamut of interesting spiritual disciplines haven't you. Many of us here have our own versions of the same basic story, looking for something to complete us and make us feel whole.

My suggestion: simply stop everything that takes you away from the immediacy of the present moment. In this very moment, right now, wholeness exists, and that wholeness and sense of completion is readily available if you are willing to relax deeply into it. What gets in the way of realizing this wholeness is our pursuits to find "something more", and continually looking to the future to find it. Forget about the future because the future is never here; it's always out in front of us as some sort of mental image, and all the while now, the only place to discover reality, is being overlooked. Now is where fulfillment and completion is found. We secretly hope all of our practices will "purify" us, or make us more worthy, so that at some future time we will be "blessed" with the attainment of perfection and become "enlightened."

Ironically, it is these very practices that can get in the way of finding that which is sought. Do practices have any value then? Sure, but not if they are a means to an end. Do whatever practice you are drawn to for the sheer enjoyment of it and not for what it will lead to.

In the meantime take some time and simply sit down with eyes closed and observe closely how your mind operates. Learn to discern its habits and proclivities. Perhaps your mind is always planning ahead or thinking about what to do next, or maybe it's thinking about past events and going over the litany of mistakes and regrets in your life. Or maybe it has a tendency to label or judge everything that is sensed. Each time you see something happening return to the immediacy of now by following your breath, or feeling the energy of the body. Bring attention again and again to this moment and relax deeply into it. Each time you find yourself thinking about anything return to the anchor of the physical body and its sensations or the breath. Without trying to manipulate anything with the mind return repeatedly to this very moment with whatever means works best for you.

In other words, train yourself to consciously do nothing. We are in the habit of unconsciously being driven by mind, and by doing that we tend to miss the present moment. So now learn to bring awareness to that fact so that you can undermine that conditioning and consciously rest in now, just as it is.

Once again, welcome to the forum -

kiki

"Miss Kelly, perhaps you'd like this flower. I seem to have misplaced my buttonhole ... Miss Kelly, you know, when you wear my flower you make it look beautiful." Elwood P. Dowd
---

I can not find the forum which was similar to this one. That forum was created to talk about spiritual things and so on, but later the founder closed that forum and so I was looking for another one like this one. I have found it accidently searcing on google if I remeber correctly.

I actually joined initially in 2012 under a different username as I used a different email address which I lost access to. But, I actually found the site by simply doing a google search after reading A New Earth. I was trying to understand the notion of the pain body better and I think I googled something like "Eckhart Tolle pain body" and this site came up.

Could it maybe be, there was nothing to be found? Just arriving here ... Just a river of life that came flowing through me through the universe, all of the sudden all recent "searching" pointed out and stopped, there was 'it' right in front of me, right from within to be more precise. That pointed out the way, to many websites I had never visited or reached ever before. Since this started three days ago, I have almost been without sleep, fueled by this new force, find myself around these and other websites, stubling from one amazement in another ... I can not remember how the exact parcours went before I hit here, as I was reading diagonally 'from within', following that which resonated in the moment ...

It looks like I need(ed) a place to start with, to 'contribute'. Tolle is surely one of my teachers that helped me get ready for this, among others, has made available what was helpful for 'understanding I could dare thrust myself' and speeding things up, of course thanks to his great insight and way to care for it and share it with us. It only makes me more satisfied to be here now